Month: November 2018

In the heyday of his collection going home for a visit was like living inside a used bookstore curated by someone who loved you, who’d shaped your sensibilities and sense of humor through dinner table puns and drinking-song lullabies, who’d taken you on walks when you were sad or anxious for some forgotten teenage reason.

I have a new, very personal essay up at the wonderful Cosmonauts Avenue this week. I’m excited this story has finally found a home but my excitement is also bittersweet. This piece has been through many revisions over the past few years as I tried to capture the anxiety, denial, and helplessness we all felt in the years leading up to my dad’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

It’s also a love story about books as artifacts, as talismans, and the way my dad’s love of books and reading has informed, and still informs, our relationship.